The
natural sciences are such things as biology,
chemistry, physics, geology, etc., those disciplines that
lend themselves to observation, measurement, and
experiment. Natural sciences are generally distinguished
from Social Sciences (such as anthropology), Humanities
(such as literature and music), and formal systems (such
as mathematics). (There is obviously a great deal of
overlap; that is, I don't know if Eratosthenes of Cyrene
was doing math, astronomy, or geology when, more than two
centuries before Christ, he figured out the circumference
of the earth. I don't think he knew, either.)
So-called "learned societies" started to crop up in the
17th century in Europe: the Italian Accamdemia dei Lincei
(1603), Académie
Française (1635), the German Leopoldina Academy
of Sciences (1652) and the Royal Society of London
(1660) and, in Naples, Giambattista
della
Porta'sAcademia
SecretorumNaturae
(1580). They all existed to study nature, although at the
time that included things we might exclude today, such as
astrology and transmutation of metals. There is a long
string of great names that follow in the 1600s, including
Galileo (1564-1642), Spinoza (1632-1677), Locke
(1632-1704), and Newton (1643-1727), that primed our
culture for the French Enlightenment in the mid-1700s, a
period that brought to bear the powers of human reason on
the world around us. There arose a whole class of
professional "scientists" —geologists, physicists,
astronomers— whose life was dedicated to their particular
disciplines and whose powers of reason were, by 1800, able
to use the technology and instruments of the Industrial
Revolution.

the 1700sThe
1700s started as a particularly turbulent time for
Naples: the Spanish vicerealm
came to an end, the new Bourbon Kingdom was founded, and
it wasn't until the mid-1730s that the kingdom was able to
set about building itself into a true state. The principal
academic society in Naples was the Neapolitan Academy of
Science and Letters, founded in 1698. It counted Giambattista Vico as one of its more
illustrious members. Other scientific organizations that
followed were the Academy of Sciences (1732), the Royal
Herculaneum Society (1755), the Royal Academy of Science
and Fine Arts (1778), and the National Institute of the
Neapolitan Republic (1799). These organizations were, at
best, only marginally connected with the university; this
was still before the endowment of various scientific
disciplines at universities; that is, there was no Geology
Department, Astronomy Department, etc. Valuable work,
however, was often done through such academies; for
example, calamitous earthquakes in Calabria in 1783
resulted in a research expedition and a significant geological study
presented to the Neapolitan Academy of Science and
Letters. (The above photo is an engraved plate from that
report.) The report resulted in the first building code in
Europe (1785) to specify anti-seismic construction. (See this link.)
The mid-1700s also sees the beginnings of what eventually
developed into the Royal Physics Laboratory in Naples, a
vast collection of scientific instruments that are now
distributed among historical displays at the Physics
Museum of the University of Naples,
the Capodimonte Museum and
elsewhere. The original instruments were the so-called
"mathematical instruments" that were in the materials that
belonged to Elizabeth Farnese, mother of of the new king
of Naples, Charles III and which he inherited and brought
with him to Naples when he came to the throne in 1735.
Over the decades, the Physics Laboratory increased with
the production and arrival of newer instruments.
Science made great strides with the arrival
of the French in Naples in 1806 and that period may
be seen as the beginning of the division of "science" into
"sciences." The Zoological Gardens came into existence, as
did the Botanical gardens; and
disciplines such as physics and chemistry were endowed at
the university. In 1808, Joseph Bonaparte (the King of
Naples appointed by the real
Bonaparte!) founded the Royal Society, which, with
various name changes, survived until the incorporation of
Naples into united Italy (1861). the Congress of
Italian Scientists, Naples, 1845

The
newer version of the observatory on
Vesuvius is on the same site as the
original, opened in 1845.

In
the early 1800s, the serious pursuit of the natural
sciences left the domain of static learned societies in
favor of more dynamic groups driven by newly endowed
science departments at universities. There were suddenly
science congresses! In Italy they started in Pisa in 1839.
In 1845 Naples hosted the seventh edition of the Congress
of Italian Scientists. This was not a congress for a
particular discipline, nor even one for what we today
would call "natural" science, but rather a grand
all-around smörgåsbord
of science and technology. The congress met from September
20 through October 5, 1845. The invitations specified that
the event was for professionals and serious amateurs
alike, no doubt a recognition of the long tradition of
fine work done by amateurs in many disciplines (as is
still the case in astronomy, for example.) There were over
1600 participants and observers from the Kingdom of
Naples, the rest of Italy and elsewhere.
Papers were presented in agronomy, zoology, medicine,
physics, chemistry, paleontology and engineering
(specifically, railway construction). Economists came, as
did students of the ancient culture of the Etruscans, and
the program had the unusual pairing of archaeology and
geography in the same category. (Opening remarks on the
benefit of such congresses were, indeed, given by
Neapolitan geographer Ferdinando De Luca,
vice-president of the congress and one of the persons most
responsible for putting geography on a scientific footing
in Italy.) There were, of course, some papers on Mt. Etna
on Sicily, but the home-town volcano, Vesuvius, stole the
show, for the congress was the venue for the opening of
the new Vesuvius Observatory
by director, Macedonio Melloni. The congress proved to be
a feather in the cap of King
Ferdinand II of Naples, who originally had had to be
convinced to go along with the whole idea in the first
place.
The guests were housed elegantly, and an orchestra from
the conservatory played for the ceremonies. Also, a number
of non-science freeloaders showed up, including a young
Theodor Mommsen (eventually, great classical scholar and
winner of the 1901 Nobel Prize for Literature) and
Wolfgang Maximilian Goethe, jurist and nephew of the other
Goethe. I don't know why they were there, and if I, myself
—a linguistics student— had not regularly frequented
geology department Friday-afternoon beer parties in
college, I might be tempted to say something snide.

Image at top: Microscope (G.B.Amici,
Modena, 1825) in the Physics Museum of the University of
Naples. Photo from The
Scientific Historical Heritage in the Physics Museum
of the University of Naples by Edvige
Schettino. The author is Director of the Physics Museum
and Professor of Physics at the Federico II University
of Naples.